I have eagerly anticipated
Jerrold Northrop Moore's latest book
on Elgar, having been a very keen admirer
of his for many years. His erudition
and musicianship are almost without
equal in the sphere of understanding
and insight into Elgar's music. Indeed,
his scholarship has been so profound
and exhaustive that many of his previous
works may be considered inaccessible
to the general public. This is not to
deny their excellence, but simply to
say that they are so thorough and meticulous
that their length may put off the casual
reader. This is a criticism that certainly
could not be applied to this small volume
of 202 pages (index excluded).
One is familiar with
Moore's work from the LP reissues of
Elgar's own 78 recordings which included
his book Elgar, A Life in Pictures.
Subsequent to that are his larger tomes,
such as Elgar a Creative Life
and Elgar and his publishers,
the latter a two-volume set of great
interest to the Elgar scholar. I have
also had the chance to hear Moore speak
and it was intriguing to hear how as
a young man he became so enthralled
with Elgar’s music that he left his
native New England and travelled to
Old England to see the country which
Elgar's music had so poignantly evoked.
He was lucky; he came at a time when
many people were still alive who had
known Elgar directly and were obviously
keen to tell Moore, then a very young
man, about him. It is for this reason
that we must accept that Moore has unique
insight into what made Elgar tick. This,
his latest book, is a more convenient
size for reading on the bus ... however,
smaller scale does not necessarily translate
into greater accessibility for the general
reader.
This book is not a
conventional biography of the composer
in the same way as is Elgar A Creative
Life or any of the other biographies
such as those by Kennedy, McVeagh and
Young (to name but a few). In the foreword
Moore claims that "the book links
the composer to his creative landscape
in a new way. It is the outcome of 50
years’ thought and reflection. In its
pages Elgar is revealed for the first
time as a pastoral visionary to set
beside Shakespeare, Milton, Turner and
Samuel Palmer". Whatever one might
think of these allusions, there is certainly
very little emphasis in the book on
the conventional "retired Colonel"
image of Elgar.
Moore commences with
an idyllic snapshot of Elgar's childhood
and the short-lived migration of the
Elgar family from Worcester to Broadheath
which coincided with Elgar's birth.
Although the Elgar family returned to
Worcester when Elgar was only two years
old, Moore, somewhat fancifully one
might feel, considers that the influence
of the countryside was already set in
stone in Elgar's make-up. The family
briefly returned to the country from
time to time and during one of these
trips in 1867 Elgar wrote what Moore
refers to as his "Broadheath tune".
This simple tune, written by a child
of ten, assumes enormous significance
in Moore's mind, and he feels that it
has a pervasive influence in much of
Elgar's music. Whether or not one feels
that he gives this tune too much emphasis
is a matter of opinion.
The main body of the
book, all in one continuous chapter,
concerns the analysis of the music and
Moore's attempts to link this with the
psyche of Elgar at the particular time
of composition, illuminating Elgar's
inherently introspective nature and
self-doubt. He also goes into great
detail about the influence of the countryside
and the places where Elgar lived when
writing his great music. Some of these
influences I consider to be a little
over-elaborated. Another key theme in
the book is the significance of keys
and musical progressions - for example,
Moore comments on the significance of
the key of A flat at the beginning of
The Apostles, being chosen by
Elgar intentionally (sub-consciously
perhaps) to be as far away as possible
from the key of D as used in the Romanza
variation of the Enigma Variations.
The casual reader who
picks up this book will also have to
contend with Moore's somewhat unusual
musical analyses of Elgar's works. These
are not set out conventionally but rather
use allusions, particularly to what
he considers to be Elgar's influences
at the time. I found some of these rather
hard going and would have preferred
a more traditional analysis. However,
there are many books which cover Elgar's
music and it was clearly not Moore's
intention to duplicate these efforts.
Rather, he is constantly striving to
get inside Elgar's complex personality
and analyse the music from this perspective:
a sort of musical psychiatrist? I do
not feel that he always succeeds but
he certainly provides insight into Elgar’s
composition. One wonders what Elgar
himself would have thought about this
book and the conclusions drawn, and
whether he would have been amused to
see some of the influences that Moore
attributed to some of the works ...
In the end, I found
this an extremely informative and interesting
book, even if some of the passages were
occasionally rather difficult to swallow.
I'm sure that readers of Moore's other
books on Elgar will be extremely keen
to get their hands on this small volume.
However, there is a danger that the
general reader will be somewhat bemused
by many of the passages and will end
up with a rather confusing picture of
Elgar as a rather capricious character,
at times both neurotic and hypochondriacal.
Thankfully, Moore goes out of his way
to counter the 'conventional view' of
Elgar as the patriotic, tub-thumping
would-be Edwardian aristocrat by setting
great emphasis on the effect that the
countryside had on Elgar and how that
became infused into his music. I consider
this association with and inspiration
of the countryside to be paramount in
Elgar's music and welcome the lack of
emphasis on Elgar the Edwardian patrician.
One is so used now to seeing the picture
of Elgar as a man in his sixties in
the 1920s and 1930s, epitomising the
retired Edwardian colonel; the image
of Elgar standing by his bicycle with
the Malvern hills behind on the front-cover
of this book is deeply refreshing. This
is Elgar in vigorous middle age and
at the height of his powers, as he cycled
through the Herefordshire and Worcestershire
countryside to the far flung hamlets
and picturesque valleys, marshes and
woods from which he was to derive so
much of his inspiration.
Moore finishes with
a wonderfully poignant paragraph which
I will quote in full. "The country
had filled Elgar’s music as it had filled
the greatest English art. It is a pastoral
vision reaching back through Samuel
Palmer and Turner and Constable, through
Keats and Coleridge and Wordsworth,
through Shakespeare and Chaucer and
the long horizontal lines of English
churches and cathedrals, perhaps to
the misty heritage of King Arthur about
in Tintagel. This was a heritage that
shaped Elgar and his music, and that
touches his music’s audience still".
In this book, Moore has made a compelling
argument for this predominantly pastoral
view of Elgar and I feel that he has
succeeded.
Em Marshall
see also
review by Ian Lace
